@rozeat ... continued on from here,
not for the first time since her arrival at dragonstone, marian had found herself wishing for home. there was not so much green here as there was gray, the soil rocky and hard and no good for planting. the sea had lost its novelty altogether. but there was a duty to be done here, in visiting her cousin. her father ought to be sending knights and riders to aid stannis, maybe. but her father lay abed, hardly able to remember his own name these days. and she had little taste for sending her people to fight a war for a crown, a throne none of them would ever be permitted to see. so she, penning a letter in perfectly forged handwriting of her father's, had sent herself here as a gesture of goodwill.
shireen was a sweet little girl and very like her father - in looks. in other ways, she was blessedly herself. ready for a story or song, of which marian had many. more than willing to play a game, or sew. the septas had tsked over the lady marian's own embroidery. a woman of her age with stitches such as these, no wonder she's unmarried. but shireen was also wise - wiser than she had expected.
her words knocked marian in the chest as if she'd leveled a blunt piece of wood, and hit. she recovered little better than she would have if the girl had, indeed, struck her. marian leaned away from the window, toward shireen, playfully tapping one of the girl's temples. ❝ you, princess, have the mind of a maester, ❞ she chewed her lower lip, and then: ❝ it's a very lonely thing, to be a little girl all alone in a big house. or to be a very great girl, far from home. but i think we shall make fine companions of each other, don't you? ❞
it is a dark, grim place, the only home that shireen has only ever known; the dragons which frame windows and form staircases, the carved gargoyles and basilisks and wyverns that are dotted all around the castle, the windwyrm which seems to scream in the wind, echoing all over the isle. there is a reason that the princess chooses to spend the time she is allowed outside in aegon's garden as opposed to anywhere else, it being the most pleasant space this side of blackwater bay. shireen does not doubt that in its heyday, it was a magnificent keep, one that emulated power and glory for house targaryen –– but just as they have crumbled and caved in on themselves, so too has their heir's former seat.
she assumes this to be one of the reasons that they receive so few visitors, even less if one were to remove those that only come to see the rightful king of westeros. her companions here are limited, the makeshift small council that surround her father either tolerating or ignoring her, the maesters civil but old, the sworn swords gruff. some of them are still weary of her, of the cracked and discoloured skin that covers half her face. they shy away as though she's contagious still, even if they would never dare voice it for fear of their king's wrath. it's why her cousin's visit has pleased her so; not only is she unafraid of the greyscale, but she speaks openly and honestly, and she has a good heart.
not to mention, she has drawn the vexation of the two lone septas in the keep towards herself, and away from the young princess; she sometimes think they resent their presence on the island when there is such little need for them in the first place. a classic case of her parents disagreeing on how she ought to be raised, shireen thinks: womanly arts were for ladies who weren’t expected to lead a kingdom one day, a kingdom that would be fractured and reeling from war by the time she came to rule it. neat stitches on silk are useless when alliances must be forged, and building a sharp mind was more important than enhancing physical beauty that would never be there.
❝ i think you're right, cousin. ❞ solemnly she replies, though with a shadow of a smile beginning to pull at the lines of her face. ❝ i'm very glad to have you here with us. ❞
